Strange; how eight months after his parents died, after his life was overturned forever, Bruce still went out and played alone by the gates.

It was a lie to say nothing had changed. The gardeners were still employed but most of the house staff had left, something about money, Alfred had explained to Bruce. There was more than enough to keep Bruce in luxury for the rest of his childhood, as long as they didn't pay other salaries. Technically Wayne Industries was still making money, but Alfred warned that it wouldn't do to rely too much on that. With the unrest these days, with the protests, its stock had gone down; there were union workers protesting in the city. Bruce knew. He'd seen it all on TV; even after the riots had mostly ended the unrest remained, like a mass of flammable powder just waiting for a match.

There was really nothing to worry about, Alfred had explained, and he would take care of it.

"Thank you, Alfred," Bruce had replied. He was lucky, he knew, that Alfred cared enough to arrange those things for him. Thomas Wayne had had no other family to take Bruce in, and Martha had been estranged from hers. Bruce supposed they could have called, when they heard about the tragedy, and offered to take Bruce in; or, at the very least, to support him; but they hadn't. It was because of Alfred, and the work that he was doing, that Bruce didn't have anything to worry about; but of course, when he went inside there would only be empty and echoing corridors and Alfred's slightly preoccupied smile to greet him. No longer would he be able to sit on the window-seat of his mother's rooms as she read Alice in Wonderland out loud. He had gone into the rooms again, both hers and then his father's, but they had been dark and forbidding; and he had soon gone.

He'd vowed to create justice for killing of his parents, kneeling by the side of the bed and praying with his head bowed. But he wasn't sure he knew what justice was, or how to get it. All he knew was that everyone talked about it: needing it; lacking it. Perhaps that was what the killer had wanted too. Bruce had insisted on looking at the transcripts of the interrogation, when they finally found the man who had done it. His name was Joe Chill. He didn't seem sad at what he had done. He didn't seem to regret having killed. He still said it was what the Waynes deserved. They'd censored out the expletives, but Bruce knew. He'd been there when the shot was fired; he'd heard it. It was such a morbid irony to pretend to tidy everything up after the fact.

He kept the interrogation attached with a paperclip, in the drawer of the desk by his bed. He would read it when he woke up in the night.

"Did they?" he'd asked Alfred.

"What?" Alfred had been surprised. He hadn't known what Bruce was referring to. "Did they fucking deserve it. Like Joe Chill said."

They were eating breakfast, sitting in the kitchen together in the manner they'd fallen into after his parents' deaths; Bruce was carefully cutting his eggs into tinier and tinier pieces, and Alfred was staring deeply into his coffee. They'd been silent, while in the distance the TV had played, muted but still shockingly loud, filled with the vibrating rumble of marching feet.

"Master Bruce," Alfred had said, shocked. "Never say that. That man was a killer, he was no one you should be listening to."

"But was he right?" Bruce insisted.

"No," Alfred said shortly.

Bruce didn't ask again. But his mind was not settled on the matter.

/

It had been raining sporadically all afternoon; nothing more than pinpricks that didn't even wet the skin, but filmed over the wood of his playhouse, darkening it, making the pole slippery. It was hot, and Bruce had taken off his jacket and folded it, neatly, in the most protected corner so it should not get wet, and rolled his sleeves up. His feet were bare. He'd lined his shoes up by the exit, with the socks in them, and a towel he had stolen from one of the bathrooms, so that if his feet got dirty he could clean them and not have to cause a scene. He didn't want Alfred to have to worry about him ruining his clothes. Alfred had too much to worry about already.

He turned his head and, like it was a mirage, there the man was again; staring over the side of the wall. Only now he wasn't smiling. He seemed sad.

Bruce swung down out of the playhouse and walked to meet him at the gates.

"Hello, Arthur," he said.

"Hello, Bruce," Arthur said. "You don't seem surprised to see me."

"You were all over the news," Bruce said. "All the channels were saying the Joker had escaped. Is that your real name?"

"It's my stage name," Arthur said.

Bruce nodded, and looked at him. He wasn't wearing the bright cherry-red clothes that had been in all the pictures of the Joker, and he didn't have his face painted. He was wearing a baggy jacket; not the same one he had worn the last time; his shoes were new.

"Are you here to kill me?" Bruce asked.

The slight smile Arthur had gotten as Bruce approached dropped off entirely, and his eyes flicked down to the ground. He put his hands in his pockets and seemed to hunch over slightly, as if the question pained him.

"No," he said. "I only kill people who hurt other people, Bruce."

Bruce stepped toward the bars. He frowned. "But hasn't everyone hurt someone? I'm sure I have. That doesn't seem to be a good reason to kill people."

Arthur laughed a little; just a chuckle that soon ended; but it seemed as though it pained him. He looked back at Bruce, and grinned, his smile stretched so wide it no longer seemed happy at all. "And what would be your good reason for killing?"

"There isn't one," Bruce said, quietly.

"Oh Brucie," Arthur said. He reached forward, dragged his hand down the wet bats between them, almost clutching and pulling at the same time. "You're lucky. You're so lucky."

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, at last.

"Don't apologize to me!" Arthur said, raising his voice suddenly, almost to a shout. For a moment, he looked really angry, and Bruce was, for the first time, almost afraid. But not quite enough. He didn't move. Then Arthur seemed to sag; still holding the bars he leaned his head against them and his dark hair swung over his eyes. "I was… I came here to… I didn't mean to get your parents killed, okay?"

Bruce remembered the clown mask, the alley; it seemed to flash across his vision and put a catch in his breath. He couldn't speak. Arthur moved his head, a little, to peek at him almost worriedly, and Bruce stepped forward. He reached through to touch the edge of Arthur's arm. He felt a shudder in the man's sinews at the touch, and in the next moment Arthur had caught his hand, pressed it almost painfully tight against the bar. His hands, Bruce noticed, were strong but his wrists and arms were bony, more so than anyone Bruce knew. He seemed surprised, when he looked down, to see that he had caught Bruce so tightly.

"You shouldn't let me do this," Arthur said. "I'm hurting you."

Bruce had been watching the press of skin, where it went from red to white, the twist of his own hand at that dangerous angle; it felt like if he moved, he might break something.

Still, it had not occurred to him that he should have moved.

"Then let go," Bruce said.

Arthur squeezed harder, for a moment, pressed his hand even more sharply against the metal, his dark eyes flicking across Bruce's face as though searching for a reaction. "You don't scream," he said, almost wonderingly. "You don't even flinch." Bruce just stared back, and at last Arthur let go. Bruce pulled his hand back, slowly, and looked at the edge of a bruise against his wrist. Arthur looked too, and seemed to wince.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have bothered you again."

Bruce was silent, for a moment. "I liked your magic tricks," he said.

"I didn't bring any with me this time," Arthur said, after a moment; almost apologetically. "I thought you might have gotten over clowns." He seemed to think, then; and then he gave Bruce a conspiratorial smile, and mimed an a-ha! expression.

Then he reached into a pocket, pulled out a match-box, and showed Bruce that it was empty. He passed it across his hands a few times, and Bruce watched, mesmerized.

Arthur pointed, at last, to Bruce's pocket, and when Bruce felt inside, he found a bunch of matches, never struck. He handed them back to Arthur, carefully, and Arthur took the whole pile and vanished them.

"Are you going to kill more people?" Bruce asked.

"Yes," Arthur said.

"Then you're not really sorry you got them killed," he said.

"I'm not sorry they died," Arthur said. "I'm sorry they had to be your parents. I'm sorry that you got hurt. I'm sorry I couldn't have been there."

"Are they going to catch you?" Bruce asked.

"Of course. I'm not trying to hide," Arthur said. "I'm just putting on a good show." He smiled a little at Bruce, once more. "I won't take any more of your time."

Bruce watched him begin to walk away, a nagging thought under his tongue. Finally, when Arthur had taken a couple slow steps, he said, "I don't mind."

Arthur turned back. He grinned at Bruce, and did a sudden skipping dance in place, sweeping out one hand in a bow to finish. When he walked off again, it was with a spring in his step.

Bruce walked back to his playhouse, consideringly. He thought he might have just invited a serial killer back to his house to see him. That should, perhaps, bother him more than it did.

/

Six months later, and it was too cold to play outside. The howling winds would shriek around the corner of the house like ghosts, and Bruce would sit up in his room, reading. There was a snowstorm that made the windows nothing more than a blur of freezing ice, hurling itself by, rushing into the void.

There had been a lot of reforms passed. Some people said it was progress, others said it was merely papering over the real issues. The Joker had killed a policeman who'd shot suspects down, and never been charged. He'd had some of his group with him. It wasn't a proper cult, the psychiatry papers had explained, because to all accounts these were mostly ordinary citizens. They didn't live together; at least, not many of them. They may have even been bystanders to the attack. He'd apparently handed out clown masks with the few goons he'd acquired as he held the crowd as witnesses to his execution. And then he'd left, and the crowd had turned on itself, spilled out into the rest of the streets. There had been three other murders reported around the event, and at least two accidental deaths, from people who seemed to have fallen, and been trampled.

Bruce wondered where the Joker was now. He hadn't been caught yet; the TV still blared At Large: Armed and Dangerous, and had for the past few days.

He wondered if he had anywhere to stay in the storm. He reminded himself, again, that the Joker was a killer and continued to be one, and he shouldn't care; shouldn't even be thinking of him at all.

But it didn't help. There was rarely a day, when the Joker was free, that Bruce didn't wonder, even off-handedly, where he was; or what he was doing; or if, when he took off his makeup and his coat and holed up by himself, away from all his admirers, he still looked like Arthur underneath.

.

.

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